User:Jr8825/sandbox 2

Talkpage • Workspace • Sandbox 1

Background since Ukrainian independence


After the Soviet Union (USSR) dissolved in 1991, Ukraine and Russia maintained ties. Ukraine agreed in 1994 to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and dismantle the nuclear weapons in Ukraine left by the USSR. In return, Russia, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US) agreed in the Budapest Memorandum to uphold the territorial integrity of Ukraine. In 1999, Russia signed the Charter for European Security, which "reaffirmed the inherent right of each and every participating state to be free to choose or change its security arrangements, including treaties of alliance". After the Soviet Union collapsed, several former Eastern Bloc countries joined NATO, partly due to regional security threats such as the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, the War in Abkhazia (1992–1993) and the First Chechen War (1994–1996). Russian leaders claimed Western powers pledged that NATO would not expand eastward, although this is disputed. Following the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, in which the pro-European integration candidate Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned with TCDD dioxin, allegedly with Russian involvement, Viktor Yanukovych was declared the president-elect despite widespread claims of vote-rigging. Large, peaceful protests challenged the outcome over a two-month period, which became known as the Orange Revolution. The Supreme Court of Ukraine annulled the result due to electoral fraud, and a re-run brought Yushchenko to power as president. Russian president Vladimir Putin and senior Russian military officers opposed these events, as well as other pro-democracy colour revolutions in the post-Soviet states, which they saw as being instigated by Western countries.

At the 2008 Bucharest summit, Ukraine and Georgia sought to join NATO. NATO refused to offer Membership Action Plans, but also issued a statement agreeing that "these countries will become members of NATO". Putin voiced strong opposition to Georgia and Ukraine's NATO membership bids. Yanukovych ran again in the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election and won. In November 2013, he refused to sign the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement, overruling the Verkhovna Rada and instead choosing closer ties with the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union. Russia had pressured Ukraine to reject the agreement. This triggered a wave of pro-EU protests known as Euromaidan, which widened in scope to oppose widespread government corruption, police brutality, and repressive anti-protest laws. In February 2014, clashes in Kyiv between protesters and Berkut special police resulted in the deaths of 100 protesters and 13 policemen; most of the victims were shot by police snipers. On 22 February 2014, Yanukovych fled Kyiv, and later Ukraine; parliament subsequently voted to remove him from office.

Leaders in Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine declared loyalty to Yanukovych, leading to pro-Russian unrest, which was amplified by Russian propaganda. In March 2014, Russia annexed Crimea. The War in Donbas began in April, with the formation of two Russia-backed separatist quasi-states: the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic. Russian troops were involved in the fighting. The Minsk agreements signed in September 2014 and February 2015 were a bid to stop the fighting, but ceasefires repeatedly failed. A dispute emerged over the role of Russia: Normandy Format members France, Germany, and Ukraine saw Minsk as an agreement between Russia and Ukraine, whereas Russia insisted Ukraine should negotiate directly with the two separatist republics. In 2021, Putin refused offers from Zelenskyy to hold high-level talks on the basis that it was pointless to deal with Ukraine while it remained a "vassal" of the US. The annexation of Crimea led to a new wave of Russian nationalism, with the Russian neo-imperial movement aspiring to annex more Ukrainian land, including the unrecognised Novorossiya. Analyst Vladimir Socor argued that a 2014 speech by Putin was a de facto "manifesto of Greater-Russia Irredentism". In July 2021, Putin published an essay titled "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians", claiming that Russians and Ukrainians were "one people".